Data entry and proofreading tasks are a necessary part of almost all business endeavors. Thus, for example, business records must be kept, bills prepared, and reports drafted. These require data of some form to be entered, often by a human into a computer, and subsequently proofread for accuracy. The process of data entry is usually performed by a person possessing highly developed finger motor skills but can also be accomplished by unskilled personnel using manually notated keypunch cards or direct data entry via a keyboard. By such, data is converted from almost any originating form into a computer readable representation, which is usually in the form of conventional ASCII computer codes.
After data entry, proofreading is a follow-up process to verify data accuracy and involves one or more data verification cycles. Each data verification cycle consists of a single visual pass of a given text segment, often a line, whereby the data is checked and compared for accuracy from memory or from a prior text. Data entry and proofreading may be accomplished by the same or different personnel and closely sequential or at separate times.
As is well known, data entry and proofreading are often tedious and time-consuming tasks. In one prior attempt to improve data entry, described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,631,396, issued on Dec. 28, 1971, to Spertus, a transparency is made of an original document and the transparency is projected onto the surface of a video display screen. The document is then read from the screen and entered by a human into a word processor or computer which would display the entered version of the document in juxtaposed format on the display screen. As described, the only method of juxtaposition between the original on the transparency and entered text was by physically varying the distance between the projector and screen, an obviously cumbersome, expensive, and slow process. Problems of character font sizing and spacing were not particularly addressed.
With respect to proofreading, it is acknowledged that computer processed comparison of related documents has been previously accomplished as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,807,182, issued on Mar. 12, 1986, to Queen, but no process for evaluating or enhancing the capability of the proofreader is known to have been meaningfully addressed.